Anthropology Commons^™

Maiden’S Fashion As Eternal Becomings: Victorian Maidens And Sugar Sweet Cuties Donning Japanese Street Fashion In Japan And North America, An Nguyen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lolita fashion is a youth street style originating from Japan that draws on Victorian-era children’s clothing, Rococo aesthetics, and Western Punk and Gothic subculture. It is worn by teenage girls and women of a wide range of ages, and through the flow of related media and clothing aided by the Internet, Lolita style has become a global phenomenon. Wearers of the style are known as Lolitas, and local, national, and global communities can be found around the world outside Japan from North American to Europe. This study is a cross-cultural comparison of Lolita fashion wearers in Japan and North America, …

Somali Children And Youth's Experiences In Educational Spaces In North America: Reconstructing Identities And Negotiating The Past In The Present, Melissa Stachel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I examine the experiences of Somali children and youth in both state sponsored and community educational spaces in North America to investigate how these experiences shape their identities and worldviews in the context of displacement, prolonged armed conflict in Somalia, and a post-September 11 environment.

This work is based on two years of preliminary research (2008-2010) and 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Somali youth and their families in Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario and Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota (2010-2011). I draw on life history interviews and focus group sessions of 51 Somali children and youth between the ages …

Toward A Dialogical Hermeneutic Of A Hindu-Christian: A Socio-Scientific Study Of Nepali Immigrants In Toronto, Surya Prasad Acharya

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In search of a hermeneutic that is dialogical, transcending one’s own realm of understanding to give enough space to the other, the theory of dialogical self provides a framework which is not only able to engage mutually incompatible traditions but inculcates a whole new insight into considering that the other is not completely external to the self. One of the most significant features of theory of dialogical self is that it is devised in the conviction that insight into the workings of the human self requires cross-fertilization between different fields. The thesis therefore employs social-psychology, religious studies, inter-cultural studies, theology …

Narrative Tactics: Windigo Stories And Indigenous Youth Suicide, Gerald P. Mckinley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines cross-genre and cross-cultural discourse between contemporary Indigenous windigo narratives and medical narratives involving the topic of Indigenous youth suicide. The Indigenous narratives include forms that are Western in their origin, the novel, comic book and film, but contain traditional Indigenous narrative patterns, actors and themes. I draw these narratives from fictions produced by Indigenous public intellectuals. The medical narratives represent a cross-section of fields but focus mainly on Coroners’ reports, social determinants of health research and suicide research based in psychology. The goal of my research is to examine how and where these forms of discourse come …

A Seat At The Table: A Nonconformist Approach To Grassroots Participation In The Articulation Of Health Standards, Leanne Bekeris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This paper assesses the need to articulate standard protocol in regards to decision making and monitoring of biomedical and ecosystem health in Canadian Aboriginal communities. This is critical, as standards in Aboriginal communities are applied by external regulators. Absence of collaboration between the Aboriginal community, healthcare institutions, and the federal government has perpetuated the deterioration of health among Aboriginal people through structural violence. This thesis utilizes toxicity results from the University of Western Ontario’s Ecosystem Health Team’s biomonitoring study of Walpole Island First Nation, which reveals that the absence of community input regarding health standards, combined with a fear of …

The Wounded Bricoleur: Adversity, Artifice And The Becoming Of Street-Involved Youth In London, Ontario, Canada, Mark S. Dolson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This is an ethnography of the everyday lives of street-involved youth in London, Ontario, Canada. Fieldwork was conducted throughout downtown London over the course of one year. I argue that the subjective experience of my informants, all of whom are “participants” in Ontario’s workfare programme, Ontario Works (OW), has been riven by some form of existential trauma (i.e., problems with anxiety and depression due to difficult personal histories of abandonment, substance abuse, etc.), which has led to an alternative process of being and becoming at odds with the hegemonic moral economy of the province of Ontario—specifically its rules and regulations …

Cultivating Respect For Difference: Exploring The Enactment Of Community At Hope Garden In Parkdale, Toronto, Monica J. Kelly

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The following MA thesis is based on research I conducted in the summer of 2010 at HOPE community garden, located in the gentrifying neighborhood of Parkdale, Toronto. Drawing on the literature on community gardens in North America, as well as anthropological theorizing on the subject of community, I explore how a sense of collective belonging is built around HOPE garden. Through an ethnographic study that focuses on the activities, interactions, and perceptions of gardeners, volunteers and coordinators involved with HOPE, this thesis shows how the differences and interpersonal conflicts that surface in the day to day working of the garden …

Emplacement And Displacement: Perceiving The Landscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic Painting, Fred Myers

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

Aboriginal Australian acrylic paintings have long been considered representations of mythologically invested landscape. This understanding has been made problematic by recent writings on ‘dwelling’. As common usage of the term ‘landscape’ seems to prioritize vision, to suggest that the acrylic paintings are landscapes only strengthens the suspicion that they are artifacts of displacement or distancing, rather than examples of the emplacement emphasized in this ‘dwelling perspective’. However, this paper will demonstrate that the relationship between acrylic painting and the land is more complex than such an interpretation. It will argue that the Aboriginal objectification of their relationship to the land …